1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data storage/retrieval, and more particularly, to protecting data from outside hacking when transmitting the data between a host device and a data storage device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Commands for transmitting data between a host and a data storage device such as a hard disk drive (HDD) are typically performed by the following process.
First, the host device transmits commands and necessary information such as logic block address (LBA) information and sector counter information to the HDD by using command registers included in a host interface circuit.
Then, the HDD interprets the commands and the information transmitted from the host device and performs operations such as write or read according to the interpretation.
Yet, when transmitting the commands between the host device and the data storage device, data is unprotected and can be a target of hacking.
Technology to solve this problem is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-298942 entitled “Disk Storage Device and Copy Preventing System Applied to This Device”. In this document, data is encrypted when it is transmitted between the HDD and the host device. But, this technology has a disadvantage in that it takes considerable time to encrypt and decrypt a large amount of data.